


Easy To Take Off (Harder To Fly)

by calleigh_j



Category: Supergirl (TV 2015)
Genre: Episode: s02e15 Exodus, F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-08
Updated: 2017-03-08
Packaged: 2018-10-01 07:29:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,478
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10184033
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/calleigh_j/pseuds/calleigh_j
Summary: Alex is worth fighting for (Exodus episode tag)





	

**Author's Note:**

> So, Exodus filled me with all sorts of prompts and feels. I haven't written anything in fandom for years (I feel so old) but I wanted to explore why Maggie decided to follow Alex on her search for her father. Hugs to my GF for giving it a quick beta, thanks to REM for the semi-mangled title.

Three days after the incident with Jeremiah and the spaceship (and what has Maggie’s life become in the last few years years, that this isn’t even the weirdest thing that’s happened to her recently), Alex still isn’t sleeping properly. Maggie’s always been a light sleeper, so as still and quiet as Alex might try to be, it’s not enough to stop Maggie from being woken up every hour or so.

It’s Friday though, or Saturday morning to be more precise, and neither of them have to work over the weekend, so Maggie gives up on trying to sleep and rolls over on her side, towards Alex.

“Sorry,” Alex says, staring straight up at the ceiling, “I didn’t mean to wake you up again.”

“I can practically hear you thinking,” Maggie teases gently, “It’s hard to sleep when there’s all that noise coming from you.”

“Sorry,” Alex says again, more quietly this time.

“Do you want to talk about it?” Maggie offers. Alex has been quiet over the past few days, seemingly reluctant to start conversations and poor at keeping them going. Getting her to talk about the drama of earlier in the week has proven almost impossible.

So when Alex says, “Why did you come with me?” Maggie’s surprised.

“Why did I go with you?” she repeats, a little lost; it certainly wasn’t the conversation starter she was expecting.

“You didn’t have to,” Alex says, “I didn’t expect you to. I mean, if Kara wasn’t going to come with me, why would you?”

Alex is still looking straight up, avoiding Maggie’s gaze, and Maggie says, “Hey, look at me,” and Alex rolls onto her side to meet her gaze. Alex’s eyes are red and she looks completely exhausted.

“I went with you because I wanted to help you,” Maggie says, “I couldn’t let you go out there on your own, especially not given how upset and angry you were,” she pauses, and then adds, “And I went with you because I wanted you to be right.”

Her last remark seems to catch Alex off-guard, and for a few moments, Alex just stares at her.

“What do you mean about wanting me to be right?” Alex asks at last.

Maggie almost regrets saying anything: she’s tired, and this isn’t exactly what she’d hoped to be doing at three in the morning. But after a rocky start, she and Alex have agreed that they have to be open and honest about their feelings, so that’s what she has to do.

“You love your dad,” Maggie starts, “You love your dad so much that you were willing to give up your job and risk getting sent to the other side of the galaxy on a spaceship.”

“In my defence, I didn’t mean to end up on the spaceship,” Alex interrupts, and Maggie smiles at her.

“You didn’t mean to,” Maggie agrees, “but you did. And you took that risk for your dad, and it turned out you were right to, because you made him realise what he was doing was wrong, and he turned round and he helped you. You fought for him and he fought for you and I wanted you to be right about him because family is supposed to be worth fighting for. I wanted you to be right because you were willing to fight for him and no-one ever fought for me like that.”

All the words come out in a rush and Maggie feels almost lightheaded when she stops speaking. She’s been to therapy, she knows about identifying and naming her feelings but still, sometimes she doesn’t really know how she feels until she tries to explain it to someone else.

Across from her, Alex’s eyes are wide and full of tears.

“Hey, hey, don’t cry,” Maggie says quickly, reaching a hand out to rest on Alex’s cheek, “It’s okay, you did a good thing.”

“But what if I’d been wrong?” Alex says hesitantly, “What if he hadn’t changed his mind?”

“Then you’d have been wrong,” Maggie says, “And that would have been awful. But at least you’d have tried. What else could you have done?”

Alex lapses into silence after that and Maggie starts to drift off.

“Do you speak to your parents?” Alex asks suddenly, her voice breaking through the early morning quiet.

“A couple of times a year,” Maggie replies, and she sees Alex wince, “We usually talk on Christmas, and on my birthday. That’s kind of it, really.”

“When did you last see them?” Alex asks, and Maggie’s not sure when they went from talking about Alex and her family to a pity party about the sorry state of Maggie’s relationship with her own.

“I went back a few years ago,” Maggie says, “One of my cousins had a baby - we were close when we were kids and she asked me to come down for the christening. I stayed with my aunt - the one who took me in - but I did see my parents briefly at the church.”

“What did you say to them?” Alex says. The whole conversation is making Maggie progressively more uncomfortable; she hates the look of pity she invariably gets when she talks about her family in any detail. It’s part of the reason she so rarely talks about them. However well she understands that it’s their problem, not hers, that keeps them from having a meaningful relationship, it’s harder for other people to understand that. And particularly when it’s people like Alex who, aside from the recent developments might have been with Jeremiah, has always had a loving and supportive family around her. Maggie knows that Alex and her mom don’t have the best relationship, but that’s a far cry from Maggie and her own.

“We didn’t say much,” Maggie says, “Just pleasantries - how are you, isn’t the weather lovely, doesn’t Mel look so good with her little baby. It’s not like a family relationship any more, not really - we’re just people who lived together a long time ago.”

“I don’t understand how someone can just give up on a relationship with their child like that,” Alex says, her voice with cracking with anger and unshed tears, “You didn’t even do anything wrong.”

“No, I didn’t,” Maggie agrees, “but that’s not how they see it. And that’s their choice. I can’t do anything to change that and to be honest, I don’t know that I would want to any more.”

Alex falls quiet again and Maggie’s not sure what else to say. She knows she can come across as uncaring (sociopathic, she thinks, is a bit much), but she’s not; she’s just been through enough to know when it’s worth expending energy and emotion and when it’s not. And most of the time, she comes down on the side of not. Thinking too much about her family is definitely in that category these days.

“Thank you for coming with me,” Alex says eventually, her voice soft, “I know what I did was stupid and it could’ve ended much worse than it did.”

“I meant what I said,” Maggie says, “Ride or die. But maybe next time could involve less chance of us ending up on opposite sides of the galaxy, okay?”

It’s the first thing that’s made Alex smile since Jeremiah disappeared again with Cadmus, so even if there are still tears in Alex’s eyes and Maggie’s so tired she could sleep for the entire weekend, it all seems worthwhile.

“I would fight for you,” Alex says then, and Maggie’s heart stutters over something she’s been trying to avoid. Because sure, sometimes she prefers not to care too much, but other times, she can’t help but feel everything all at once. She doesn’t know how to respond, so she just leans over and kisses Alex instead.

“You should try and get some sleep,” Maggie says as they break apart.

“I am pretty tired,” Alex agrees, punctuating her statement with a yawn and cuddling into Maggie’s side.

A few minutes later, Alex’s breathing has evened out and she’s asleep, and Maggie lies in the darkness, waiting for her own thoughts to quieten enough for her to sleep too. It’s been an unexpectedly heavy middle of the night conversation, but to her own surprise, Maggie feels okay about it. It’s only been a couple of months, but this is as comfortable as Maggie’s felt with anyone in a long time (maybe ever). She and Alex are developing the kind of closeness she’s always struggled with in previous relationships, and Maggie thinks that maybe it should scare her, but it doesn’t. Instead, she finds herself wanting more of it, wanting to spend more time with Alex, wanting to share more things with her.

There’ll be time enough for sharing in the morning though, and Maggie closes her eyes, content to lie here with Alex, until she drifts off to sleep.

 


End file.
